The US Has Returned 1,019 Migrants to Cuba in 2021

The US Coast Guard returned 39 migrants to Cuba on Friday. (Screen capture)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 27 December2021 — A total of 1,019 Cubans have been returned to the island this year by U.S. authorities, according to data provided by the State newspaper Granma on Sunday. The report also mentioned the return of other groups from Mexico, Bahamas, Cayman Islands and Russia, without specifying the number of people.

On December 24, the U.S. Coast Guard returned to Cuba 39 rafters intercepted in various operations. One of the groups used “a sport fishing boat taken from its owner” whose whereabouts are currently unknown. The 39 returned migrants arrived on the Coast Guard Cutter Raymond Evan in Orozco Bay, Artemisa.

The first of the interceptions occurred on Sunday, December 19, 10 nautical miles off Stock Island, according to a statement issued by the Coast Guard. A day later and at different times, authorities stopped three smaller boats near Key West. continue reading

Last weekend, another 25 Cuban rafters were detained after making landfall at three different locations in Key West, Officer Thomas G. Martin reported Monday on his Twitter account. The Border Patrol provided assistance to the migrants, who were reported in good health.

One of these arrivals was captured on video by Cuban artists María Karla Rivero Veloz and Jean Michel Fernández. “We just saw some rafters who have just arrived, right where the 90-mile buoy is from here to Cuba,” the actress said. The group, made up of six rafters, including a 10-year-old girl, said they left last Saturday at 2 p.m. from Playa Baracoa.

The Cubans were taken into custody and will be able to apply for asylum by demonstrating to an immigration officer that they are afraid to return to their country. If they convince the judge, they must then post a bond. In the best case scenario, they are released with a temporary stay permit in the U.S., known as Parole.

The mobilization of [Cuban] black berets for an illegal departure from Baracoa Beach, in the province of Artemisa, was reported on social networks on Saturday. Rene Almaguer uploaded to his Facebook profile a video in which applause can be heard after a boat managed to escape. “People jumping to get out of Cuba,” said the Havana native who lives in Tampa, Florida. “They got away, I’m glad,” was one of the reactions from users.

Nothing prevented the people leaving the island in small boats, commented Dallann Loraa on the images from the municipality of Bauta in the province of Artemisa, shared by Almaguer, in which people in civilian clothes can be seen carrying machetes.

Translated by: Hombre de Paz

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Back to School in Cuba and Back to the Mask

Restart of the primary school year in Granma province, in November. (Facebook)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, Generation Y, Panama, 31 December 2021 — Ana Laura’s mother was summoned by the teacher to hear complaints about her daughter’s behavior. The 14-year-old teenager has returned to her classroom in Havana after more than a year without classes and now she feels that she does not fit in the desk, does not pay attention to the content and does not want to take notes. “More than half of her grade is in the same place,” laments the teacher. Returning to school is a global challenge, but the situation worsens in Cuba, where excesses of ideological indoctrination contribute to students’ rejection of school.

At the beginning of the confinement, the island’s educational authorities believed that it would be enough to teach the subject at a distance, place a teacher in front of the camera or send assignments through instant messaging. But the months without morning assemblies inflamed with political slogans took their toll on the influence that the Cuban regime had on children and young people. For a long time, these students did not have to attend a place where the blackboard alternates with photos of party leaders, nor did they have to attend “revolutionary reaffirmation” events in which students are frequently involved.

No wonder the historic protests that occurred on July 11 took place when schools had been closed for almost a year. As if the spell had vanished after missing the daily repeating of the words that elicited that state of submissive acceptance, the youths awakened civically. Among the more than 1,000 political prisoners of that day, a good share are under 20 years of age, many barely over 16, considered the age of majority in Cuba. continue reading

For those who did not end up behind bars for demonstrating in the streets, going back to school gives them a bitter taste. There are classmates missing from the classrooms and everywhere they hear the stories of summary trials and courts where sentences of more than ten years are asked for exercising the right to protest. But also, those who are returning to the education system are not the same as those who stopped going to classes in the spring of 2020 when the numbers of those infected by covid-19 began to increase. They have changed a lot.

Putting these children and adolescents back into the mold of indoctrination is as impossible as putting the tiny glass slipper on one of Cinderella’s sisters. They no longer fit in the ideological prison of a school, although the confinement of “stay at home” has made them miss exams, sigh at a notebook and even idealize classes full of mathematical formulas or compound sentences. They are fed up with the cult of personality, the slogans of fiery rhetoric and the double standards that all this provokes.

When Ana Laura’s teacher laments that she is not interested in the subjects, she believes that it is the rebellion of age or the lack of teaching practice. But it goes further: in this last year the teenager learned to live without that iron mask and now she no longer wants to put it on again.

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Editor’s Note: This text was originally published in Deutsche Welle in Spanish.

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

Frei Betto and the ‘Excessive Appetite’ of Cubans

Meeting in 2014 between Frei Betto and Fidel Castro. (Granma)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Elías Amor Bravo, 27 December 2021 — I remember the first time I read, back in 1996, the Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot by Montaner, Vargas Llosa Jr. and Plinio Apuleyo.

I had no difficulty in identifying [Brazilian activist] Frei Betto as the protagonist of this work, a character who circulates throughout the Americas, with that vocation of being out for blood against everything that represents progress, modernization and development.

Later, when I read the second part, I had no doubt about Betto. Above all, because at that time he was one of the few who had an open door to Fidel Castro’s office to conduct those interviews that sought, unsuccessfully, to sweeten his character, something like turning him into the impossible legend that he is.

Now, we find ourselves once again with a piece of extraordinary value to measure the moral stature and intelligence of Betto, who continues to stick his nose into Cuba, with the same distorted vision of a reality that credits him with deserving the title given to him in the works of Montaner, Vargas Llosa and Apuleyo.

And really, only an idiot can think that Cubans “have a big appetite”, or that “in Cuba there is no hunger” and that it is this voracious appetite that is the origin of the food problems that exist in Cuba. God forbid! And that such things are said by someone who claims in his resume to have spent two weeks on the island in November as “advisor to the regime on the Food Sovereignty and Nutritional Education program, which has the support of FAO, Oxfam and the European Union” is even more scandalous, because it represents a lack of respect for a people who have been experiencing considerable difficulties in obtaining basic products for more than two years.

Or perhaps that this advisory function was done from a placid stay in a hotel run by Spaniards in some cay of the northern part of the island. Which could be anything.

Beto believes that by increasing local food production, through family, urban and suburban agriculture, it is possible to achieve compliance with the Cuban Program for Food Sovereignty and Nutrition Education. Nothing new under the sun.

This is the same program that was questioned by the United Nations, before the pandemic, placing Cuba at the same level as Haiti in terms of countries with the highest food risks in the world. Betto defends continue reading

the regime at all times, pointing out that “it spends more than 2 billion dollars a year to import food, including from Brazil, from which it buys, among other things, rice and chicken (85% of the products that Brazil imports from Cuba are tobacco, cigars and cigars)”.

And, at this point, it should be pointed out that the correct term is “wastes”, because the decision to buy these products for 2 billion dollars means not doing so by betting on the domestic supply, so that an unproductive agricultural sector that fails to meet the needs of the population coexists with these massive imports of goods that could be obtained in Cuba.

Betto should explain why. For Betto it is very easy to blame all the ills of the Cuban agricultural sector on dependence on foreign oil, climatic catastrophes, or the blockade, following the official script, even citing the lack of containers, which are unloaded in other countries and then the products are transported to the island, which makes them more expensive.

He concludes, all of this is a strangulation for the “fragile Cuban economy, inclusion of the country in the list Made in the USA of countries that promote terrorism.”

Not a single assignment of responsibility to the regime.

And then he mentions COVID-19, “which forced the island to close its doors to its main source of foreign currency in recent years, tourism”.  The same as other countries, but Betto refrains from comparing Cuba with Costa Rica or the Dominican Republic, where tourism in 2021 has been a success in travelers and income, while Cuba was slowly drowning. It is optimistic to think about the return of tourists. At the moment, nothing seems to affirm it.

Betto also wants the 243 measures adopted by Trump to reinforce the blockade to be eliminated, but he does not make the slightest comment on the repression suffered by the Cubans on 11J [July 11 demonstrations] when they protested extensively and intensely against that regime that he likes so much, and to whom he spares no words of support and defense.

For him, Cubans only have “a big appetite”. And then, by way of conclusion, he affirms in the key of a revolutionary slogan that “in spite of this dramatic situation, Cuba resists. The entire population, of almost 12 million inhabitants, has access to a basic monthly food basket and to the Health and Education systems free of charge. There are no homeless people or beggars”.

I insist: let him pay a visit to the hundreds of disappeared and detainees after July 11 who are still waiting for the summary trials of Castroism to be condemned to long prison sentences.

Let him leave the comfortable resort and take a walk around Old Havana. For Betto these people do not exist. They do not deserve even the slightest consideration. He is only interested in “selling” the SAN Plan, which is what has paid for his comfortable stay on the island and is the latest wonder of the regime that now thinks it is going to achieve all its objectives, with the participation of the street (as in the times of that “literacy campaign” that was of little use for what it had been programmed for, since it had other undisclosed objectives), which is something he also seems to like when it comes to acting on economic matters (Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, Federation of Cuban Women, trade unions).

Not content with that, Betto returns to the charge saying that “Cubans have eating habits that can be perfectly changed, such as the preference for wheat bread, an imported cereal”.

And, as in the times of the conquest by the Spaniards, because it is no longer possible to take a country further back in history, Betto points to the use of cassava to produce bread (cassava) or corn (which Cuba also imports from the United States) and even coconut flour.

He also wants meat, which is not available, to be replaced by beans, lentils, spinach, peanuts, soybeans and avocado, rich in protein, which are also not produced in sufficient quantities. To end up forgetting the cows and defending soy milk and yogurt (when Cuba does not have soy and must import it).

Who commissioned Betto this study, for which he is sure to charge a high fee? He must be surprised by the conclusions. I have no doubt about it.

Years ago, Fidel Castro was also obsessed with the properties of the moringa [a medicinal tree], which reminded the great Alvarez Guedes of that joke about the rosemary plant (romerillo) that has thrilled several generations of Cubans.

Not content with all the nonsense and idiocy, Betto ended up defending, of course, agroecology, no doubt to give vision and support to one of Raul Castro’s projects that the communist bureaucracy of the regime shelved in a forgotten corner, as is done in Cuba with that which is bothersome. In fact, Betto said he had “visited several rural properties with high productivity that do not use chemical fertilizers” and highlighted the term “property” recalling that it was the Revolution with the Agrarian Reform that gave land titles to farmers and landless peasants.

And yet, he did not have a single reference to the thousands of landowners who were expropriated without compensation by the regime and were left in absolute misery, forced to flee the country. Undoubtedly, Betto sees what he wants to see. This is a feature of Montaner’s, Vargas Llosa’s and Apuleyo’s character description.

If tomorrow Cuba were to evolve towards civic freedoms and market economy, Betto would not have the slightest inconvenience to see the same thing and propose the same guidelines.  What happens is that then, perhaps, he would not be so well received on the island. And his ideas would go unnoticed.

At the end of the day, Betto with his analysis puts any state policy before the priorities of the citizens. He believes in a collectivist model of society, where the means of production are controlled by the state and wealth or prosperity are outlawed, to the extent that they go against the principles he defends. From that weighty and majestic position of moral superiority that the left uses to criticize its rivals, Betto says that Cubans are to blame for what happens to them. And maybe, in this, he is right.

Translated by: Hombre de Paz

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Cuba’s Fleeing Athletes

Some of the Cuban players who escaped in 2021 during international championships. (Collage)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 28 December 2021 — It was going to be a quiet championship, without the great prominence of adult tournaments, but the under-23 world cup held in Mexico became the greatest disaster in the entire history of Cuban sport with the escape of nothing more nor less than half the entire team.

The squad was made up of 24 players, but since they set foot in Mexico, they fled one by one until 12 were gone. Geisel Cepeda, Loidel Chapellí Jr., Yandi Yanes, Bryan Chi, Miguel Antonio González, Yeinel Zayas, Luis Dennys Morales, Uber Mejías, Dariel Fernández, Loidel Rodríguez, Reinaldo Lazaga and Diasmany Palacios joined the list of young people who left the Island.

Added to the seriousness of the situation was the fact that, weeks before leaving for Mexico, the coach, Eriel Sánchez, had declared that sporting attitude, which he was in charge of, was added to others when choosing the athletes. The players were patriots, he said, a quality that is not in doubt, except in the sense that the manager said it.

The loss of 50% of the team, which played out under the watchful eye of the international sports world, was attributed by the Cuban authorities to the alleged evil arts used by the United States to encourage the emigration of talented ballplayers. continue reading

But the massive flight of Cuban players began months earlier, when at the Baseball Pre-Olympic held in Florida, second baseman César Prieto , and pitchers Lázaro Blanco and Andy Rodríguez left the island’s delegation .

In 2017, shortly after US Major Leagues reached an agreement with the Cuban Baseball Federation to establish contracts for the island’s players in the neighboring country, then-President Donald Trump broke the pact.

The island does not forgive the loss of foreign currency that the agreement would have resulted it and since then it has not stopped labeling the measure of “player robbery” without observing the responsibility of the regime when the elite of the sport bleeds every time they board a plane.

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Cuba: Marino Murillo, the Man who Sowed Chaos With the ‘Ordering Task’

Murillo was partially ousted in April, when the Political Bureau of the Communist Party was renewed by more than 20%. (Archive)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 30 December 2021 — Marino Murillo has caused many annoyances, both to ordinary Cubans and to his own home, the Communist Party. In charge of designing the major economic changes that came into force this year — for which the foreign press saddled him with the nickname of reform czar — and architect of the ’Ordering Task’, he has shown how it is possible to lead the Titanic ship directly to an iceberg.

The Tarea Ordenamiento — Ordering Task — took many years to design, but its failure has been of such magnitude that, before it was two months old, a remodeling was already underway. Marino Murillo, who appeared at the end of last year and at the beginning of this on numerous occasions to explain how things would work (well) in Cuba from that moment, advanced that the ’basic basket’ — offered under the rationing system — would include some new services and would cost, inn accordance with prices, about 1,300 pesos. Whether the chicken or the egg came first no one knows, but with that reference the new state wages were adjusted.

Barely a few months had passed when the price of the ’basket’ was already around 3,000 pesos, to the chagrin of Cubans, who find themselves unable to cope with the galloping rise in prices afflicting the island every day. continue reading

Murillo was partially ousted in April, when the Political Bureau of the Communist Party was renewed by more than 20% and Murillo, also head of the Commission for the Implementation and Development of the Guidelines, left the leadership.

However, in November the Party gave him a second chance by appointing him president of Tabacuba, the State tobacco company which has experienced very tense moments this year due to the lack of tobacco, one of the main products of the Island. The Cubans greeted the appointment with fear; among the congratulatory messages, irony reigned.

“Many congratulations. It is undoubtedly a recognition for you for the excellent results you obtained in 2021. Don’t throw out, recycle.”

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

2021 in Cuba, the Year of the Collective Face

These names make up the convulsed and hopeful countenance of a changing nation. (Collage)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 24 December 2021 — Only a few times before has it been so difficult to compile this list with the 14 most relevant faces of the year in Cuba now ending. The twelve months that have elapsed so far have been marked by an infinity of events and thousands of protagonists who have shaped a 2021 that will be remembered for a long time. A wave of deaths due to covid-19, popular protests, extreme repression, musical soundtracks that shook an entire nation and the beginning of a new migratory exodus are some of the crucial moments that we have lived through.

The list that 14ymedio draws up every year-end has, on this occasion, a greater number of groups, movements and platforms. More than a list of figures, it is a collective face, to which many have added their imprint and have helped define its features. There will be those who miss a name, but those on the list make up the convulsed and hopeful countenance of a nation that is changing.

We present the anatomy of 2021.

1. Archipiélago: Yunior García, Saily González, Daniela Rojo, David Martínez

2.  Agent Fernando, a doctor at the service of State Security

3.  ‘Patria y Vida’, the latest anthem for the freedom of Cuba

4.  Luis Robles, the ‘young man with the placard’

5. Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, one year harassed by Cuban State Security

6. Silvio Rodríguez, in ambiguity until the end

7. The 11J prisoners, detained for shouting “freedom” in Cuba

8. Lines as an instrument of social control

9. The fleeing athletes

10. The generals RIP

11. Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Calleja, the powerful son-in-law comes out of the shadows

12. Kenny Fernández Delgado, another rebel priest

13. The rebel doctors of Holguín: Manuel Guerra and others

14. Marino Murillo, the man who sowed chaos with ‘Ordering Task’

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Cuba: Luis Alberto Rodriguez Lopez-Calleja, the Powerful Son-in-Law Comes Out of the Shadows

López-Calleja was sworn into into the Cuban Parliament in a ceremony in Remedios, Villa Clara. (Vanguard)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 29 December 2021 — Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Calleja, Raúl Castro’s former son-in-law who is known as the “Tsar of Gaesa,” joined the list of deputies this October, when he joined Parliament in a ceremony in Remedios (Villa Clara). Former division general and born in 1960, the military man was elected with 98.5% of the votes cast by the delegates and replaces the late Antonio Pérez Santos.

Months before, during the Eighth Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC), in a “no brainer” López-Calleja joined the Political Bureau. was the arrival at the Political Bureau of López-Calleja. Analysts had been foreseeing the rise of the military man to positions closer to the top of Cuban power for years. His presence in the Political Bureau is the closest of any member of the family clan, at least in a formal and public way, at the top of the PCC.

Until then, López-Calleja was a man with a discreet profile and, although he was a member of the Party’s Central Committee and executive president of the very powerful Grupo de Administración Empresarial, SA (Gaesa), he had remained in the shadows.

Yes, the United States had noticed him, and in September 2020 added him to the list of those sanctioned by the Office of Foreign Assets Control, a relationship that includes people and organizations with which United States citizens and residents permanent staff are prohibited from doing business. The measure also freezes the individual’s accounts in the country if he had any.

His leadership of Gaesa, which controls foreign exchange stores, hotels, real estate investments, construction companies, port services, remittance and currency exchange agencies, customs services and electronic commerce made him the head of the Cuban economy, all of it, under the military boot.

But his rise to the political table had a separate interpretation. Some analysts have wanted to see in this a masterful move by Raúl Castro. According to this theory, Díaz-Canel is a burned-out politician who has no popular acceptance and must be replaced very soon.

López-Calleja is over 60, which is now the maximum age for a president in Cuba, but not for a prime minister. Marrero, on the other hand, who runs Tourism and is therefore closely linked to Gaesa, could occupy the position of president. The tandem looms.

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Cuban Sissi Abascal’s Appeal is Denied and Her Six-Year Prison Sentence is Confirmed

Caption: Abascal is also a member of the Pedro Luis Boitel Democracy Party. (Facebook)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 27 December 2021 — Lady in White, Sissi Abascal, who participated in the July 11th protests in Cuba was transferred to prison on Monday, after a failed appeal of her six-year jail sentence.

Annia Zamora, the activist’s mother, suffered “severe chest pain” at the Jovellanos Tribunal in Matanzas, where the sentence was ratified, a family source told 14ymedio. At the moment, she is better, “she is stronger and recuperating,” confirmed dissident Martha Beatriz Roque.

Before being transferred to the hospital, Zamora told Roque that outside the tribunal “there was a great ruckus” and “policemen and many patrol cars” arrived. Sissi Abascal “didn’t even have clothes on” and “they took her just like that” directly to jail, added the dissident.

Abascal, who is 23 years old, was accused of assault, contempt, and public disorder for protesting in the park in the Carlos Rojas neighborhood, in Matanzas.

According to the legal document, the young dissident and member of the Pedro Luis Boitel Democracy Party was charged last September by Silvia Martínez Montero, a major in the National Revolutionary Police in the municipality of Jovellanos. The document states that Abascal yelled phrases such as “Patria y vida” [Homeland and Life], “down with the Castros” and “down with the Revolution,” and that she urged “the area’s population to join her.” continue reading

From that moment, the 23-year old has been under house arrest. “They are fabricating these crimes because at no time did I hit the official, Silvia Martínez Montero, and she is accusing me of doing that,” denounced Abascal at the time. “We were the victims. They kicked my sister in the head, they beat my mother all over, and my father was unjustly jailed for 47 days.”

“I am peaceful. I raise my voice and will continue yelling what I did that day: ‘change’, ‘freedom’, ‘down with the Castros’, ‘down with the dictatorship’, ‘Díaz-Canel, singao [motherfucker]’, ‘freedom for all political prisoners’, ‘long-live a free Cuba’, ‘patria y vida’,” she asserted in a post on social media.

Translated by: Silvia Suárez

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Barbara Farrat, Mother of 17-Year-Old Imprisoned for July Protests in Cuba, is Arrested and Released

Bárbara Farrat Guillén with her grandson, son of the young Jonathan Torres Farrat, who was arrested on August 13. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 24 December 2021 — Bárbara Farrat, the mother of 17-year-old Jonathan Torres Farrat who was imprisoned after the July 11 (11J) protests, was released after being under arrest for several hours, after she was detained when she tried to leave her home this Friday morning. “She went down to the corner to look for cigarettes and the patrol car that was turning the corner took her away,” Torres Farrat’s girlfriend, Daimy Morales Moré, reported to 14ymedio .

Morales explained that Farrat’s husband, Orlando Ramírez, came out to find out what was going on but the officers did not give him reasons for the arrest. “Orlandito ran down to ask questions and they told him that they were taking her to the Aguilera police unit. He then went there to ask about her but they did not want to give him any information,” he added.

Bárbara Farrat lives with her family on Calzada de Diez de Octubre and since her son was arrested on August 13, she has been tireless in the fight to achieve his freedom and also that of the others imprisoned because of the 11J protests.

On Friday morning, her home was surrounded by a police operation, the family said. On several occasions, State Security agents have threatened Farrat with prosecution for sedition if she continues to post on social media about her son’s situation.

Minutes after leaving the police station, Orlando Ramírez told this newspaper that “in the same entrance” of the Aguilera station he could see the moment when a patrol was taking Farrat to another place. “She tried to tell me something but the windows were up, and the patrol car was escorted by a State Security captain who was riding his motorcycle. At the station they told me that she was never there,” he said. continue reading

Ramírez also says that a State Security official was on his motorcycle from early on, watching the corner of the house. “Many mothers in some WhatsApp groups were saying that they would go to meet this afternoon in the churches to pray for their children and for this Christmas that they will be spending away from them.”

He specified that “this is not a crime,” although he denounced that “what happens is that in those same groups there are mothers who are passing information to State Security, and that gathering was between them and it did not have to go public. But it came out. Maybe they thought that by giving information they are going to save their children without knowing that they are sinking them further and making more families suffer.”

“This country has given me so much, so very much pain, that this is not just because of my son or the minors in prison, this is because of all the injustices that are being done in this country, that I promised that I would denounce them” Farrat said recently in a live broadcast on her Facebook profile. On that occasion, she was accompanied by other members of three families who, likewise, have a close relative imprisoned for demonstrating on July 11.

“For every cruelty that they do to my son I will continue to denounce them. I will not shut up. Even if I manage to free my son, for every person who is imprisoned for 11J I will continue to denounce it,” said Farrat at the time. “I beg you to unite us as mothers. Now comes the 24th and 31st [of December], and no mother needs to spend these dates away from her family members.”

One of those who also on that occasion demanded the freedom of her son was María Celia Aguilera, mother of the detainee Luis Armando Cruz Aguilera, for whom the Prosecutor’s Office is asking for a sentence of 18 years of deprivation of liberty.

“I want justice and I will continue to ask for justice,” said Maria Luisa Fleitas Bravo, a resident of Arroyo Naranjo and mother of 11J detainee Rolando Vazquez Fleitas, currently in the Valle Grande prison. “They are asking for 20 years for my son, I did not send this video at first because I was waiting but they are already asking for 20 years as if he were a murderer, as if he were a rapist,” Fleitas denounced in a recording that  circulates in social media

Bárbara Farrat has also denounced other threats that she has received from State Security after delivering the letter addressed to the Cuban leader Miguel Díaz-Canel, in which she and a hundred family members ask for the immediate release of those detained for the protests of 11 July and all the political prisoners. They collected more than 150 signatures and Farrat and her husband delivered it this week to the Offices of Attention to the Population of the State Council

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

A Private Business in Cuba Buys Sugar from its Customers to Make its Chocolates

“We buy sugar” says the sign in the chocolate shop. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Natalia López Moya, Havana, 23 December 2021 — A sign with the phrase: “We buy sugar,” caught the attention of all the customers who came to the Bombonera Kakao chocolate shop located on the well-heeled 12th street between 23rd and 25th, in Vedado this Thursday. The quality of the products this private business has meant that not a few Havanans go to the establishment ready to buy their merchandise, especially around Christmas and on Valentine’s Day.

Located in the midst of state businesses that take payment in foreign currency, Kakao exhibits a varied range of products derived from chocolate, despite the fact that it has its main raw material, another of the most used ingredients in its elaborations, sugar, is scarce to the point that it has forced the owners to put the sign on the door.

The island’s shortage of supplies not only hits Cubans with fewer resources, but also causes havoc in the self-employed sector, where many have found it necessary to resort to unusual supply methods — most of them illegal — in order to manage the raw materials necessary for their business.

It is a curious thing for many of those searching for the crystals, to find the unusual request to purchase. In the absence of a stable supply that the State must guarantee to the self-employed in the wholesale stores, the same clients who access their business end up being the potential suppliers.

Iván, a young man who came to the establishment in search of the exquisite chocolates and chocolate figurines offered there, was impressed when the clerk explained: “We don’t have any sugar left and we haven’t been able to get it. Luckily we have continue reading

chocolate, although if you realize it we have been forced to raise prices a little because every day everything is more expensive.”

After choosing some of the smaller chocolates, Iván promised to return to buy one of the Christmas offerings. “They are a little out of reach of my pocket, but at home we will treat ourselves at the end of the year with one of those chocolates,” he said to the seller while pointing to a figure of Santa Claus and another of a Christmas tree, with a price of 1,300 and 1,000 pesos, respectively.

The shortage that the island is experiencing also causes havoc in the self-employed sector. (14ymedio)

“We will be open throughout the end of the year, including the 31st, it all depends on whether we get the blissful sugar,” was the merchant’s reply.

Anabel is another of Kakao’s regulars. “Whenever I can I go and treat myself, and on February 14 I am a fixture there,” she tells 14ymedio. A friend who was browsing the stores that only take payment in dollars in search of soda to accompany the Christmas dinner, saw the sign in the chocolate shop and called her to tell her.

“If you want chocolates, run here because these people have run out of sugar and they will close at any moment,” the friend told her, to which Anabel replied: “I put my boots on, I’m going to bring them 10 pounds of white sugar that I had saved for emergencies and I’m going to exchange them for an expensive chocolate.”

National sugar production is going from bad to worse. According to official figures, last year the country was only able to provide 416,000 tons of the product for national consumption, since it has committed to China the annual sale of 400,000 tons. The Island consumes annually between 600,000 and 700,000 tons.

Last July, the state sugar group Azcuba announced that the 2020-2021 harvest was “one of the worst in the history of Cuba”, meeting only 66% of the planned target of 1.2 million tons.

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

The 11J Prisoners Detained for Shouting Freedom in Cuba

Since the end of November, the 11 July detainees are being tried in different cities on the Island. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 27 December 2021 — They did not belong to any opposition organization within the island nor, as the official media claimed in a foreseeable smear campaign, were they instigated by the “enemy” from outside. Simply, together with thousands of compatriots in dozens of cities throughout the island, they decided to go out into the streets infected by the images from San Antonio de los Baños that, that July 11, spread like wildfire on social networks.

“We are not afraid,” “we want freedom,” “we are more,” “down with the dictatorship” and “homeland and life” were some of the cries that sounded in those spontaneous demonstrations. The first jug of cold water for those events, unpublished in 62 years –  the antecedent is the Maleconazo in 1994, but only in Central Havana – was the declaration of the president Miguel Díaz-Canel that same afternoon: “The combat order is given.

The internet blackout established by the state telecommunications company Etecsa, at the service of the State, that day and the following days, generated confusion about the balance of the repression. At first, non-governmental organizations counted more than 5,000 detainees. Ultimately, there was one dead, Diubis Laurencio Tejeda, shot in the back by a policeman in the Havana neighborhood of La Güinera, in Arroyo Naranjo, on July 12. continue reading

Cubalex, the legal advisory group that accompanies the relatives of the prisoners, registers a total of 1,314 people detained those days, although it says that its list presents a “sub-registry.” Of these, at least 696 are in detention centers. Of the 570 released, many are awaiting trial on bail or in house arrest. A total of 140 people face charges of sedition.

Among those arrested are also opponents and former prisoners of the Black Spring of 2003, such as José Daniel Ferrer and Félix Navarro.

Since the end of November, the 11J detainees have been being processed in different cities of the Island. The fiscal requests range between 6 and 15 years of deprivation of liberty, for alleged crimes such as resistance, attack, public disorder, instigation to commit a crime or disrespect.

A particularly dramatic case is that of Yoan de la Cruz, the first to broadcast the protests live via networks from San Antonio de los Baños. For him, they are asking for 8 years in prison.

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Silvio Rodriguez, in Ambiguity Until the End

The Cuban singer-songwriter Silvio Rodríguez during his concert at the Wizink Center in Madrid, last October. (EFE)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 26 December 2021 – The singer-songwriter Silvio Rodríguez recognized this year, for the first time, that Cuba “could be” a dictatorship. He did not do so on his blog, Segunda Cita – where he makes room for different but monotonous voices, all pro-government – but in a Chilean magazine, Culto, in an interview that was later reproduced by the official media Cubadebate.

In it, he also said that there are “orthodox sectors of the Cuban Government that have obstructed changes,” although he released the designated president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, from being a part of this, saying he understands the “need to break a certain inertia” and that is why he approved certain laws.

At the same time, and in a regular speech, he pointed to the United States as the origin of the island’s ills: “They have been suffocating Cuba for more than 60 years, attacking it, slandering it, and when it defends itself, it is a dictatorship. It may be so. That they have forced it to be so to some extent. Who forced it? The greatest dictatorship on the planet: that of selfishness, that of money, that which does not believe in love but in usury.” continue reading

“Down with the blockade,” Rodríguez declared twice in the massive concert that he gave at the beginning of October in Madrid, at which fifty Cuban exiles demonstrated in the capital of Spain.

After the July 11 protests in Cuba, the singer-songwriter accepted requested to talk from Yunior García Aguilera, from which he left with the promise to intercede for “the prisoners who were not violent.” The playwright even spoke of a future joint “project” that would be made public “in due course” and that “could serve as the beginning of a truly plural, inclusive, civic, respectful and broad debate.”

For a moment, it seemed that Silvio Rodríguez would follow the path of other formerly pro-government colleagues, such as Pablo Milanés, Leo Brouwer or Chucho Valdés , and would say enough to the repression exerted by the regime against those who seek change on the island. But For now, there are no signs of it.

On December 16, he was awarded the National Community Culture Award, which Rodríguez received at the headquarters of the “sociocultural project” Cabildo Cuasicuaba, in Los Sitio, Centro Habana. Very close to there, that same day, with his back to the usual official acts of complacency and propaganda, a passerby died when the wall of a house in ruins fell on him.

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

Agent Fernando, a Cuban Doctor at the Service of State Security

The Cuban regime took this doctor out of the closet to discredit Yunior García. (Screen capture)

14ymedio biggerWe know the agent Fernando — whose real name is Carlos Leonardo Vázquez González, a doctor by profession — as a mock nemesis of Yunior García Aguilera. The Cuban regime took this doctor out of the closet at the beginning of November to discredit the playwright and the visible face of the Archipiélago, whom he had met in a workshop in Madrid that promoted democracy in Cuba.

Revealing his status as a spy at the service of the regime was a necessary gesture to present García Aguilera as a person trained in what the Government calls “soft coups” and which consists of organizing peaceful protests to overthrow the Government.

The task assigned 25 years ago to Vázquez González was to infiltrate the opposition to gain their trust, something he achieved thanks to his profession as a doctor, even managing to be at Oswaldo Payá’s funeral, along with Guillermo Coco Fariñas.

Before his trip to Spain to participate in the Saint Louis University workshop, agent Fernando visited Fidel Castro’s grave to swear to him to “defend the Revolution to the last consequences,” according to what he told the state newspaper Granma, which dedicated a comprehensive eulogy to him once his identity was revealed.

Reinaldo Escobar, editor-in-chief of 14ymedio, also participated in those seminars on democracy in Cuba, and witnessed the strange attitude of the spy, very insistent when approaching former Spanish president Felipe González, to whom he gave a box of cigars, but very quiet in his participation. García Aguilera also said he remembered him and wished he might be “a better doctor than an undercover agent.”

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara: One Year Harassed by Cuban State Security

Otero Alcántara was declared a “prisoner of conscience” by Amnesty International. (Screen capture)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 26 December 2021 — Before being arrested on July 11 , without having had time to participate in the protests that day, Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, leader of the San Isidro Movement (MSI), had long been subjected to permanent harassment by the political police.

Specifically, since November 26, 2020, when State Security evicted more than a dozen activists quartered for freedom from number 955 of Damas Street , in Old Havana, the artist’s home and headquarters of the MSI. by rapper Denis Solís (today, by the way, in forced exile in Serbia). From there he left on a stretcher, after several days on a hunger and thirst strike.

The artist did not spend a day without State Security surveillance since then, but he never stopped participating in different initiatives, for example the launch, in March, of a platform called, like the song, Patria y Vida (Homeland and Life).

Shortly after, on April 25, Otero Alcántara went on hunger and thirst strike again to demand that his rights be respected, after a month of police siege of his home. The activist also demanded the return of his artistic works or compensation for those that were destroyed by the political police.

After several days of fasting, in the early morning of May 2, he was taken from his home against his will and taken to the Calixto García hospital, where he remained for almost a month with hardly any outside continue reading

communication and without explanations from the State, which leaked videos of his retention to try to discredit him.

Meanwhile, on April 30, when they held a protest in favor of Otero Alcántara in the central Obispo street of Havana, Mary Karla Ares, Thais Mailén Franco, Félix Modesto, Inti Soto, Nancy Vera, Yuisan Cancio, Luis were arrested. Ángel Cuza and Esteban Rodríguez, all accused of “disturbing public order.” Of them, Rodríguez, Soto and Cuza remain in prison and Ares, Franco and Cancio are under house arrest.

Otero Alcántara was declared a “prisoner of conscience” by Amnesty International, which together with other international organizations, has urged President Miguel Díaz-Canel to release him “immediately and unconditionally.”

The artist is in the maximum security prison of Guanajay, Artemisa, where he has also carried out hunger strikes, accused of public disorder, instigation to commit a crime and contempt.

Although he shares a case with Maykel Castillo Osorbo, imprisoned in May, Otero Alcántara was arrested on June 11 , as were several of the main figures of the Cuban dissidence, such as Félix Navarro, of the Democratic Action Unit Table, and José Daniel Ferrer, leader of the Patriotic Union of Cuba, who has denounced physical and psychological torture.

Despite the Government’s attempts to negotiate his freedom in exchange for leaving the country — as happened with Hamlet Lavastida, who headed to Europe with Katherine Bisquet after being released from prison — Otero Alcántara has made it clear, through the art curator Claudia Genlui Hidalgo , who “will not accept exile as an option under any circumstances.” The San Isidro lighthouse has not been turned off in prison.

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

Luis Robles, the ‘Young Man With the Placard’

Robles was arrested on December 4, 2020, for protesting in Havana. (Screen capture)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 25 December 2021 — Luis Robles Elizastigui turned 29 on December 2 at Combinado del Este, a maximum security prison, two days before the first anniversary of his arrest. His crime: holding up a placard on the central Boulevard of San Rafael in Havana that read: “Freedom, no more repression, #FreeDenis” (referring to rapper Denis Solís, sentenced to eight months in prison in a summary trial and today exiled in Serbia).

The images of his solitary demonstration, disseminated on social networks, were immortalized, two months later, in the video clip for Patria y Vida (Homeland and Life). At the same time, the images are only incriminating evidence presented by the Prosecutor’s Office in the trial, held on December 16 in Marianao, Havana, in which he was prosecuted for enemy resistance and propaganda.

In the video, however, it is observed that he did not struggle with the agents who detained him, nor was there any reference to any enemy on his poster, and that the passers-by who surrounded him tried to defend him from the police.

A graduate in Computer Science and with a son, readers learned more about Luis Robles thanks to his brother, Landy Fernández Elizastigui, who became the communication channel of the “young man with the placard” with the outside world. Fernández has not stopped denouncing the mistreatment Robles has received in prison and, despite threats from State Security, he is not afraid to defend his brother publicly.

In an interview with 14ymedio, Fernández said that his brother “has always thought differently about the regime.” We were able to verify this in a video of Luis Robles recorded a few days before his protest and disseminated by the family last July, when the authorities, due to the 11J demonstrations, had already suspended the trial of the boy sine die.

In it, Robles called for “a change in the system,” since communism, “a destroyer of souls,” he said, had turned Cuba into “a true hell”…This generation is not willing to continue bearing it,” he said. “This is our time and we have to take advantage of it.”

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.